


They Say Life Carries On (and on and on)

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Birthday, Gen, Grief, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-31
Updated: 2010-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-11 09:16:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Winchester's 30th birthday, spent in a motel room with two sick little boys</p>
            </blockquote>





	They Say Life Carries On (and on and on)

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by the combination of a prompt [](http://cream-fudge.livejournal.com/profile)[**cream_fudge**](http://cream-fudge.livejournal.com/) gave me ages ago and a birthday request from [](http://triquetralmoon.livejournal.com/profile)[**triquetralmoon**](http://triquetralmoon.livejournal.com/). Title from Peter Gabriel's ["I Grieve."](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQ3wpjdYMqk)

John Winchester's 29th birthday hadn't been anything special. With the baby on the way, they didn't have much money to play with, but Mary wrapped up the new pair of work boots he'd put on layaway and Dean drew him a card with bright shapes in waxy color on construction paper. Mary baked him a cake from a boxed mix and Dean helped decorate it, jelly beans laid out in careful lines around where Mary had written _Happy Bday John_ in green icing.

He blew out his candles and then ate his cake as Dean crawled up on his lap and got icing and chocolate crumbs all over the both of them. Dean chattered happily, explaining all the different kinds of cars he'd drawn on the card and how they were driving real fast since John fixed them. John went to bed with Mary in his arms, and all in all it was just another day, the day he turned twenty-nine.

A year later, John was awake to see the motel room alarm clock flip around to midnight on his 30th birthday. He was sitting on the side of one of the room's double beds, feeling a hell of a lot older than thirty as he watched his boys sleep. At least they were finally both sleeping, though he knew that before long one of them was going to wake up--uncomfortable, hot, cold, needing to pee, needing a drink. He wished, shamefully, that he could just sleep and let somebody else take care of things. There was nobody else.

Sammy wasn't even a year old yet, but thankfully he wasn't very sick. The thermometer John had picked up from the drug store along with a sack full of all the things he remembered Mary keeping in the medicine cabinet for the boys showed just a low-grade fever. Nonetheless, Sammy's nose was a constant trickle of snot, and he wouldn't sleep, couldn't get comfortable all alone in his portable crib across the room from Dean's bed. When John couldn't take the fussing, couldn't deal with worrying about getting kicked out of the room for a crying baby, he gave in and moved Sammy to lay next to Dean, a pillow and John's folded up jacket forming a barrier to keep him from tumbling off the bed.

Dean was quiet--always so quiet, even now when he clearly felt like hell--and sicker than Sammy, but not sick enough for a doctor. Not yet. His fever was high enough to make him weak and restless, his little body twisting around on the sheets as he tried to get comfortable. His nose was all blocked up whenever the children's cold medicine wore off, and John could tell it made his head hurt from the way he scrunched up his little forehead. He'd only fallen asleep when John put Sam down on one side of him and then sat down himself on the side of the bed where Dean could see him even when his eyelids were heavy, barely open.

John stood up as slowly and smoothly as he could and then sat down on his own bed. He let his shoulders slump, his head dropping toward his knees to stretch out his back, and he felt every one of his thirty years. Just a year before, everything had been perfect. Sure, he and Mary had fought sometimes, but it hadn't been anything serious. Just his pride and her stubbornness pushing up against each other, and every time they found a way to smooth over each other's rough edges to fit together better they ended up closer.

Now, Mary was only a few months gone, and all of John's edges felt raw and ragged and wrong. Even on a good day, when the sun was shining and the boys were smiling, John could feel the pain of her loss all through his body. Now, at midnight with the cold creeping under the door and both of his boys sick and miserable--now, with exhaustion pulling at his muscles and bones--John didn't know how he was ever going to get to thirty-one.

Everybody told him what he needed to do--find a little house to buy with the insurance money, get Dean settled and ready to start kindergarten in the fall, tread water until he could find a new wife to take care of his boys and then move on with life as though Mary had never existed at all. Everybody said it was the right thing to do. John had spent his life trying to do the right thing, following orders and playing by the rules, but this didn't feel like the right thing at all. He couldn't see how it was right to move on, to go back to some version of a regular life, when he could still see Mary burning on that ceiling every time he closed his eyes.

As John sat on the motel room bed wondering if he could risk letting himself sleep, his eyes burned, dry and rubbed-red from exhaustion; he could almost smell the smoke from that night. He heard a sniffle and sat up straight, his neck twinging from the sudden movement, and opened his eyes to see Dean watching him from the other bed. Just beyond Dean, Sam was still asleep, his little body lax, blue-veined eyelids fluttering lightly.

"Hey, Deano," John whispered. "You need to go to the potty?"

Dean sniffled again and shook his head, frowning. He looked flushed, and under John's hand his face was hot. It was too soon to give him more medicine, but his fever was clearly rising. John knew he'd have to get the boys into the doctor in the morning if they weren't better, but the pediatrician's office didn't open for hours. John remembered other late nights, hovering at Mary's side trying to help with a sick Dean, and he made a decision.

John leaned down and scooped Dean up in one arm. "C'mere, Bud." Dean grabbed hold, and as John stood up straight Dean let his head fall forward, a warm weight against his shoulder. With his free hand, John moved Dean's pillow over to take Dean's place at Sammy's side and then took Dean into the bathroom, leaving the door open in case Sammy woke up.

With Dean clinging to his chest, John stopped up the tub and got tepid water running. Back out in the main room, he gathered up a clean t-shirt and underwear for Dean and a washcloth that was softer than the threadbare motel towels. Dean sniffled a few times against John's shirt, but otherwise he was silent. Before the boys got sick, Dean had been talking--at least a little, at least to John and Sam--but somehow the fever had taken away the energy he needed to push past the silence he'd been hiding in since Mary's death. With Dean so sad and clingy and quiet, it was like November and December all over again, but in a motel room instead of a borrowed bedroom at Mike's house.

In the bathroom, a few inches of water had accumulated in the tub, and that was enough. John stripped off Dean's sweaty PJs and put his boy in the tub. Dean frowned, his lip trembling like he wanted to cry, but he stayed put. The sight of Dean trying so hard to be good ached like smoke in John's chest. He sat down on the hard edge of the tub and wet the washcloth before smoothing it over Dean's sweat-darkened hair.

"That's a good boy." He kept the washcloth moving slowly over Dean's back and chest and arms, trying to comfort him and bring down the fever and maybe get him ready to spend the rest of the night sleeping. When Dean started to shiver, John pulled him out of the tub and dried him off, held him close for a minute in the harsh, overly-bright light of the bathroom.

Dean's fever was down and Sammy was still sleeping; John would've thanked God if he could still bring himself to believe. Instead he just got Dean to drink a cup of apple juice from the kitchenette's mini-fridge and then put him down next to Sammy again, already more than half asleep. John walked around to the other side of the bed, pulled away the pillow and coat keeping Sammy safe, and crawled in under the covers. He wrapped his arm over both boys, and he could feel them breathing, hear the small, snotty sounds of their congested inhales.

He was thirty years old, old enough to make his own decisions and choose his own path through the broken remains of his world. The one thing he knew for sure was that his first choice would always, always be his boys.


End file.
